What Is the Best Kind of Traffic You’d Want to Get?

That’s why it’s so important to not only get the pure quantity of traffic down, but how qualified and interested that traffic really is in what you have to offer.

Thus, it’s always important for us to see how your traffic interacts with your site.

Do your visitors bounce right back to where they came from because they didn’t find the information they were looking for? Work on your bounce rate.

Did you provide them with additional resources to check out in the post they just read? Use deep linking.

Did you encourage your readers to interact with you and other visitors by leaving a comment?

It only makes sense that you can do a whole lot more with a couple of thousands of steady and highly targeted monthly visitors than with tens of thousands of visitors who could care less about what you really have to say.

What Are Your Basic Traffic Sources?

Google Analytics has a great, although sometimes confusing, way to classify traffic sources.

According to them, there are three basic traffic sources:

Direct traffic.

Referral traffic.

Search engine traffic.

Let’s take a look at each one to see how it impacts our websites.

What Is DIRECT TRAFFIC?

This by far is one of the most confusing traffic sources there is and I’ll be happy to shed some light on it.

Strictly speaking,

direct traffic is the type of traffic that comes to your site without any referral, as in someone types your domain name in the URL box or follows a bookmark.

Therefore, direct traffic is not the traffic that came to your site by clicking a link from another website (like Twitter, Facebook, another blog you guest posted or left a comment on), it’s not the traffic that comes from your paid campaigns (like Google AdWords – that would be under “Other” traffic sources in Google Analytics) and it’s not the traffic that results from someone typing a query on a search engine.

However, and that’s where it gets a little confusing, direct traffic is not limited to the two sources I mentioned above: typing in the URL and coming from a browser bookmark.

It can also mean:

Traffic coming from untracked email campaigns and newsletters;

Traffic from links in documents like Word, Excel, or PDFs;

Traffic coming from 302 and some 301 redirects (depending on server or browser settings)

Traffic from security-restricted environments, where no referrers are passed

Assuming that most of us don’t want to dig into the fascinating technical details of direct traffic, but simply want to learn what direct traffic means to our websites, let’s talk about that.

Is Direct Traffic Important to Your Website?

Extremely and here’s why.

1. Brand recognition.

When a visitor comes to your site by typing in your URL in the address bar, it means that they’ve already recognized you as an authority on the subject and are coming back to get more.

When you think of traffic generation and associate that thought with Traffic Generation Cafe and come to visit me as a result, it means that I am doing many things right in terms of branding this blog as an expert advice hub on the subject.

Once you develop it as a source and continue providing valuable content, it will continue to grow all on its own.

3. Reader loyalty.

In a way, direct traffic is the most targeted traffic you can get. This source brings you visitors who are already familiar with what you have to offer and they CHOOSE to come back for me.

This factor also makes them some of the warmest, the easiest to convert leads you can ever get – you don’t need to prove yourself to them, they already know what you are all about.

How Do You Increase Your Direct Traffic?

Now that you see how valuable this traffic source is to your business, I hope you are ready to see what you can do to develop this kind of loyal readership.

1. Become the master of your niche.

Whatever niche you chose for your website, stick with it, keep it narrow, and become a true expert in it.

Don’t blog about anything and everything under the sun; stay focused. Remember, the whole idea is to develop a brand on a particular subject and become the best expert in that field there is.

Then and only then, readers will associate you with the subject and come back for more.

2. Give.

Relentlessly provide value.

Find ways to give giving a whole new meaning.

Here are some examples for inspiration:

My Friday Blog Audit series: in this series, I did extremely thorough audits of different blogs to show my readers what practical changes they can take back to their own businesses to significantly improve them.

Sunday Coffee with Ana: for a while, I did live broadcasts every Sunday morning on my Facebook fan page, where I invited my readers to come and interact with me live, ask questions, network, etc.

Most recently, I offered my readers to answer any traffic generation questions they had for me. I knew that I was opening Pandora’s box in terms of all the comments I’d get and all the work I would have to put into answering those questions. However, the result: stronger and more engaged community, is definitely worth it.

Creating opportunities to get your readers involved is the key.

3. Pick a great domain name.

You need a domain name that is easy to remember, spell, and come back to.

That’s another reason keywords in a domain work so well – think of traffic generation, and TrafficGenerationCafe.com comes to mind easily.

Building a community of responsive readers should be one of your primary goals of building a successful blog.

Why should you care?

Your blog community is what will bring you constant and consistent direct traffic.

They are the ones that will spread the word about your blog via social media (which happens to be also very important for your search engine ranking optimization); they are your best source of natural link building; they are the ones who are most likely to provide your blog with social proof you need to draw in new readership.

How to Track Direct Traffic in Google Analytics

However, there is one caveat you need to keep in mind when tracking your Google Analytics direct traffic: yourself.

How to Exclude Your IP Address

If there’s one thing that can mess up your direct traffic stats, it’s tracking the amount of time you spend on your own blog, which my guess is quite a bit, plus any outsourcers you might hire to help you out: web designers, IT professionals, etc.

Good thing it’s easy to filter out those stats; just follow these simple directions:

1. Establish your IP address as well as IP addresses of all of your blog helpers. The simplest way to do it is to go to http://whatismyipaddress.com/.

2. Once you have your list, go to your Analytics Settings and find Filter Manager at the bottom right.

3. Once you click on Filter Manager, fill out the required fields and press Save.

Once you apply the filter, your direct traffic stats might drop significantly, but at least you’ll be tracking all the right things from this point on.

Google+ Comments

I’m just starting to blog, 8 days old to be exact, lol. I referred your post to my current blog before reading it because it’s about traffic which I mentioned there in my blog. This post is very helpful. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks Ana. Btw, I received few offers want to send me thousand of traffic with only $5. Unbelievable… How to send real people to click on my site. So I didn’t take the offer. I am sure you know about this kind of offer. How people do it so easily? They even told me I can track thru Google Analytical…so weird to hear that.

Fist time reader. I really like the post and quickly ran off too stop my IP from being counted in my analytics. One thing I do want to add is that direct traffic does have an effect on SEO and rankings.

My findings are that direct traffic will engage with your website/blog more therefore reducing bounce rate which does (now?) effect rank.

Interesting you said that direct traffic reduces bounce rate – in my experience, it actually increases it because much of it are the regulars who stop by to check out the new content and leave once they read the latest post.

They are not as interested in looking through other pages or older posts because they most likely read them in the past.

Of course, direct traffic that comes to a blog because they heard of it somewhere does seem to be more likely to stay and read.

Excluding the own ip address from google analytics is a great way to measure real traffic to own blog. Currently, I’m using Dialup internet service. For this reason, I can’t exclude the own ip address from google analytics Thanks Ana for your tips.

I’m glad I found this post. I was actually concerned that quite a high proportion of my traffic is direct! What I’m really trying to find out is if Direct Traffic has a positive effect on Search Engine placement?

Very true, Wayne; one type of such traffic that I mentioned in the post might be traffic from security-restricted environments, where no referrers are passed, and of course, there might be more instances of that.

I do believe though that such traffic is negligible in the greater scheme of things.

Forgetting to block your IP in Analytics is an easy mistake to make that will completely screw with the data your getting back. Google would be wise to make a prompt to block IP’s during the initial setup…

Thanks for the tip about excluding yourself from Analytics. I always sign out of Google before doing a search for keywords that are relevant to my business. I have also made a work from home income since 2005 by blogging about a business. One very experienced networker found my blog and the next thing I knew half of Russia was in her sales organization and I am her sponsor.

I totally agree with your tips, about analytics. It is very important to understand what they mean, otherwise they’re just charts and pictures. Did you know Google Analytics just released an article today on how to track your Social Plugins with Google Analytics?

I always wondered exactly what Direct Traffic was, and if it included my own computer, and now I know.. and I was able to filter it out. Thanks!

My biggest takeaway from this post – not all traffic is created equal, and you’re better off with less quality traffic that engages and contributes than simply more and more traffic that comes and goes.

Direct traffic was also somewhat a mystery to me and what you are saying here makes sense. So much so that it prompted me to see my analytics right now, because it has been a while since my traffic sources had shifted from the top being search, followed by referring, direct and others, to direct (48%), search (36%), referring and others. I will take this this as a good signal :), although I might have to work a bit more to increase my organic traffic.

Also, thanks for the tip about filtering my own IP from direct sources. Never bothered using it before.

Get traffic is very big task for any blogger but if any blogger have quality in his post then no body can stop him to achieve the success and get more traffic on his site , so my point of view the perfect blogger can do these all things very well.

Ana, note blogging on a different level – while I work loosely in SEO and online advertising, I haven’t focused on this in my personal blog … yes stupid of me I know! But alas, the plumbers pipes and all! Very clever and informative – even your layout, style and cheekiness jump out of your page. Thank you for the insights.

Thanks for taking on this subject and elaborating on direct traffic. Sadly I believe most of my direct traffic is me! But I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Do you have any thoughts on what a healthy or desirable mix of traffic sources might be (search, links, direct, etc.)? Personally about 80% of my traffic comes from google which seems high. But I think that’s OK? Any thoughts on this?

Funny you ask, Alexis – the follow-up post to this one will address this very question.

A good rule of thumb is about 40% of your traffic should come from search engines. That way, if Google were to change its algorithm – yet again, you are protected from it affecting your traffic too much.

Great post Ana. That filter did the trick for me. Hopefully my traffic numbers won’t be down. Most Google Analytics plugins will remove the code when you’re logged, but this ensures you won’t be tracked. Thanks for the tip.

I stay away from any plugins that I find unnecessary, and GA plugins are in that category, since most of these things can be easily accomplished another way. Excluding your IP address is one of those things.

Hello Ana, I strongly like the idea of picking a keyword rich domain while starting off. This ensured success for few of my niche blogs that are earning me some bucks a month. Traffic generation is the livewire of every successful business, without it, it’s TOTAL DISAPPOINTMENT

Who Else Wants to Increase Web Traffic in 30 Days?

"Ana has a unique insight into running an internet business."- Yaro Starak, Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

Ana Hoffman… Who?

"When it comes to traffic generation, Ana knows her stuff. She provides actionable information about the latest tips, trends, and technology that can result in getting more visits to your blog or business. Not only does she give great advice, but she puts it to the test and shares the results in a regular income report so you know that her strategies really work if you are willing to put in the effort!"

Kristi Hines, Kikolani.com

"Ana has become someone I look to for a unique insight into all kinds of aspects of running an internet business, but especially for updated SEO information. She does the research and testing to back up her claims, so I refer back to her content when I need to see what is fresh and current in the world of generating traffic to your website."